And, before you write Mid-Atlantic off, I challenge you to read all the cases cited in just chapter one of the Gilberts' Outline, alone, (we read all the cases in each volume) and tell me you still remember what the court said in Pennoyer before you express such dismay at my having to review it. You obviously have not attended any online law school. Otherwise, you wouldn't make such presumptive statements. Any school, online or otherwise, it what the student makes of it. The student does the reading and the learning by his or her efforts alone. Online and correspondence law schools are not a waste of time. The concept has been proven worthy in Great Britain for the last hundred years.

What I said wasn't a knock to your school. Your school uses Gilberts as textbooks. Gilberts, or any other supplements (nutshells), usually focus on the law as it currently exists rather than the developmental aspects of the law (Pennoyer v. Neff). Essentially, your online law school is a giant bar review course.

And, did you also know that being deceptive is not encouraged in the field of law? You acted as though you were interested in a sincere discussion and later, admitted to wanting to teach me a thing or two about "thinking like a lawyer." I think that one of the reasons why attorneys have such a bad reputation is because some of them really think like you do: saying one thing and thinking something entirely different.

I guess you couldn't catch the sarcasm oozing out of any of my posts. Please don't report me to the ethics committee.... lol

Personally, I thought the casebooks were, in large part, a waste of time. One could get through class and school using Gilberts and canned briefs.

Although you could probably get through school using Gilberts and canned briefs, that's not the point of law school. As can be seen in this thread, it is important to understand the theoretical underpinnings of legal concepts. In practice, you can't rely on Gilberts and canned briefs to come up with arguments to novel issues of the law. Just like the court in Pennoyer, you'll have to reason through the problem using your own cognitive abilities and creativity. Seeing courts struggle to form new legal concepts and understanding how the court got there is critical in developing your own reasoning skills.

I would never just read Gilberts without downloading the cases and reading them one by one. The language of law is a skill that has to be maintained everyday (at least for me). When I was in law school, I ignored all the outlines. I only read the casebooks and the hornbooks. I think that if I had read Gilberts as well, I would have focused on the black letter law more than I did.

Pennoyer v Neff is cited in Gilberts. Printed out, it is 15 pages long. Gilberts focuses on what the student wants it to focus on. Just like in any brick and mortar law school, some students will just skip over the citations. Others, like me, see the value of reading all the cases. The downside is that because I'm reading all the cases, I have been in chapter one of Gilberts for 4 months now. (I work full time.)

In Pennoyer, Neff said the judgment wasn't valid because he was never personally served. The court said the judgment wasn't valid because his land was taken and sold after the default judgment was imposed. There is more to Pennoyer than just the concept of personal jurisdiction. There are other cases, like International Shoe and Shaffer v Heitner, that discuss minimum contacts and the foreseeable risk of being "haled into court." Pennoyer is important. But, it is just one case. The other few thousand cases are also part of the "800 thread count sheet", if you will, that put it all together.

By the way, the IRS obviously doesn't agree with the majority in Pennoyer: if you owe back taxes, that agency will attach any property you acquire to satisfy the old judgment they file on you.

I sent you a message, dezarie123. If anyone else is interested in having serious discussions about court opinions, please send me an e-mail: passaroa25@gmail.com. We can each brief a case, present it in the e-mail, and discuss what the courts said.